


Fairies Gone Rogue

by Adapted_Batteries



Series: Land Pirate AU [5]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Multi, The Librarians Shipathon, The Librarians Shipathon 2018, land pirate au, sort of mush between dresden files magic and librarians magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 01:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15256254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adapted_Batteries/pseuds/Adapted_Batteries
Summary: The LiTs have a new case in Chicago, but they aren’t the only ones trying to figure out what’s behind the random accidents.





	1. Faries Gone Rogue

The clippings book fluttered its pages incessantly, trying to alert the team that a new case had arisen. There were people in the main room. Their willfully ignoring the book was the problem. Rather than waste time when they weren't going to listen, the clippings book settled and reached out into the Annex, locating the trio currently very...occupied...behind one of the bookcases. 

It knew what they were doing, of course. The clippings book knew everything by being a communication device for the Library. It knew that humans did this from time to time, and the act meant (generally) that the people involved were emotionally bonded. For the team to work well, it was important...but not nearly important to do so at the frequency the Library had been witnessing, which any number larger than one per relationship within a couple months was more than Library could stand, considering they did not live here. The LiTs were very much above that limit, and rightly so, the Library was annoyed. If the Librarian and Guardian were here more often, they wouldn't be so frisky. Such was the sacrifice the Library had to endure to save the world from Dulaque and whatever else might go wrong in the meantime.

Since pages alone wouldn't work, the clippings book sifted through the nearby shelves in search of the heaviest book that wasn't in a delicate state. It then relocated that book physically to the floor near the trio at a much faster speed than it would've achieved by gravity alone, producing the desired boom. If the clippings book could smile, it would at the shock and startled faces on the LiTs. Satisfied it had their attention now, the clippings book went back to fluttering on its stand. 

“That wasn't very nice,” Cassandra mumbled, looking around to see if any other books were going to bombard them while she straightened her blouse.

“Sounds like a new case,” Stone grumbled. He glanced in the direction of the still fluttering pages as he smoothed his hair back into a less wild state.

Ezekiel didn't bother with fixing his appearance, as he didn't intend to stop what they had been doing. “It can wait a little while longer.” 

Cassandra seemed torn between siding with Ezekiel or the clippings book. “I think the Library wants us to look, considering it did throw a book at us.”

“All it did was stop our fun,” Ezekiel replied to Cassandra, then tilted his head up to the Annex in general. “Not cool, mate.”

“It’s not like we haven't done this already,” Stone started, getting increasingly more unsettled. “Though if the Library knew where to throw the book, that means it was watchin’...which means it probably watched all those other times…”

“It’s not recent news the Library keeps tabs on what goes on inside it,” Ezekiel retorted.

“Let's go look at the case,” Cassandra butted in, trying to get Stone off his train of thought so he wouldn't be freaked out the rest of the day, and hopefully keeping Ezekiel from being grumpy until they could finish what they had started. “We haven't had one for a few days, it'll be fun.” 

The boys reluctantly followed her to the desk where the clippings book was still impatiently fluttering pages, settling when they finally neared. They read the various newspaper clippings silently, perplexed with the case.

“Various accidents in Chicago doesn’t seem very magical to me,” Ezekiel said, not trying very hard to hide his disinterest.

Stone seemed a little more intrigued. “That’s what you said last time about all the clocks in that town in North Carolina skipping time, when it turned out the town itself was doing the time skipping.”

Cassandra gave Ezekiel a rather annoyed look. “You do get that things in the clippings book are there  _ because  _ it’s magic somehow, right?”

“I know,” Ezekiel said with a sigh, “but it’s nothing dire, it can wait…” he tried to lean towards Stone, but got shoved away by said cowboy.

“This is our job, Jones, we can’t just do it only when we want,” Stone said. “Besides, I think the Library was trying to send us a message with that book.”

“What, that it doesn’t want us to be happy?” Ezekiel said, most of that sentence directed up towards the ceiling. He waited, but the Library was not going to satisfy him with responding.

“Well, we aren’t really starved for...it...we did just do it a couple days ago in that reading room,” Stone added.

“You can say ‘sex’ Stone, we’ve already been over this,” Ezekiel tutted. “And if that’s the case, why didn’t it stop us then? Or Last week?”

“Maybe it was how much we were, not that we were,” Stone said, face tinged red with realization.

Ezekiel didn’t care for rational and reasonable opinions the Library had about that. “I think the Library is just jealous it can’t love like we can.”

Stone blinked at Ezekiel a few times in confusion. “....What.” 

While they argued, Cassandra had been rereading the clippings. “Hey, are you two done yet? Because I think I have a lead already.” The boys focused and looked to where Cassandra was pointing. “In most of these, the people mentioned seeing a small flash of silver light sometime before the accident occurred.”

“You think someone might’ve been casting spells on them?” Stone suggested.

“More than likely,” Cassandra said. She pointed to another clippings. “This one just happened today, that would be the best one to start at.”

“Truck carrying paints explodes in a neighborhood, coating everything in unicorn vomit. I don’t envy whoever’s cleaning that up,” Ezekiel said. 

“There haven’t been any injuries, at least nothing above minor ones. Even that truck driver came out only covered in blue paint,” Stone pointed out.

“That is weird,” Cassandra said. “I don’t know of any spell that causes bad luck but with protection from serious injuries. Too bad Jenkins had to go visit Nessie, he would know what spell this was.”

“Guess it’s time for some investigating,” Stone said. The group looked at each other in agreement, then Ezekiel went about setting the door to Chicago.

The scene of the paint explosion was just as weirdly awe-inducing as it sounded. All colors one might see on a house exterior, along with brighter primary and secondary colors, splattered everything within thirty or so feet. The road and the cars parked on either side of it got most of the paint, but the closest houses also got impromptu paint jobs, complete with paint free spots in the shapes of the cars in front of them. Cassandra was thankful the breeze was behind them because the colors all around were enough to make her head hurt. 

The street was not void of people either. Most stayed outside the paint mess, but easily spotted shoe prints occasionally entered and left homes. The carcass of the truck trailer, exploded from within, still sat in the epicenter, the sides and top metal walls peeled back somehow instead of breaking completely. A road work crew at the other end of the street looked like they were figuring out how to best clean the mess, but hadn't started yet. 

“So, what should we look for?” Ezekiel asked. 

“Any sigils or runes, magical objects, well, I don’t really know what to look for,” Cassandra replied.

Just then, a silver light the size of a basketball zoomed past them, zipping into an alleyway two buildings behind them. Stone pointed in that direction. “Does that count?” 

“That definitely counts,” Ezekiel answered for her, starting down the street after it. Stone and Cassandra followed him half a second later. Like the professionals they were, they each stuck a head around the edge of the building, specifically in the order of Ezekiel on bottom, Cassandra in the middle, and Stone on top.

A man in a black duster knelt in front of a chalk circle, waving his hands while the silver light zipped around, stuck inside an invisible forcefield it seemed. He was saying something, but it was too low to hear. 

Stone pulled the two below him back around the edge of the building. “That has to be the wizard causing the accidents,” he whispered.

“Okay, so what are we going to do?” Ezekiel asked, arms folded in front of him. “Just walk up to him and be like ‘excuse me, but can you please stop doing magic?’ Because that will totally work.”

“We have to subdue him. If he gets away now, he may cause another accident somewhere else,” Cassandra said. She looked to Stone. “You could handle him...right?”

“Theoretically, yeah, but I have no clue what magic he’s capable of,” Stone said with a shrug. “We can’t just charge at him.”

“No...but Cassandra and I could distract him, then you give him a good knock to the head,” Ezekiel said. 

“Alright. Give me a couple minutes to get around the block to the other end of the alley, then do whatever distracting you want,” Stone decided. He gave each of them a tender look. “Please be careful, okay?”

“We’ll be fine, mate, it’s you who needs to be careful,” Ezekiel added, playfully ruffling Stone’s hair, but there was concern in his eyes. “You were the one laid up with a broken leg two weeks ago.”

Stone took Ezekiel’s hand out of his hair and held it with both hands. “I told ya, I’m fine, Jenkins cleared me after healin’ me all the way. I’ll watch myself.” He let go and started walking, turning sideways. “Two minutes, okay?” They nodded in acknowledgement, and once Stone disappeared around the corner, they commenced to crafting their spectacular plan.

Like the professional thieves they were, Cassandra and Ezekiel strode up the alleyway like they owned it. “Oi, mate, what are you doing there?” Ezekiel said once they’d gotten within ten feet.

The man startled, looking at them more confused than spooked. He scuffed the circle on the ground, freeing the silver light (which definitely looked like a little person with wings wearing garbage for armor). Both Ezekiel and Cassandra got distracted by it, which the man took advantage of.

“There’s nothing going on here, whoever you are. You can just go ahead and walk back the way you came,” the man started, picking up a staff that had been laying on the ground out of their sight. 

“You’ve been making quite a mess,” Cassandra said, trying to ignore the man now standing at his full almost seven feet, with his equally tall staff carved with runes slightly glowing. She also kept her eyes from darting behind the man, where Stone had started creeping into the alley.

“That truck out there was nothing. Chicago’s seen a lot worse, trust me,” the man said, and then realized how he sounded. “Hold on, I didn’t mean-” He didn’t get a chance to clarify as Stone took him down, football defensive lineman style. 

Even though Stone was a foot shorter than the man, he had enough muscle to turn the wizard into a rug for the alleyway, complete with a not great sounding “oof” from the man. The man had surprisingly quick reflexes despite the tackle, but instead of smacking Stone with his staff, Stone caught it and used the momentum to pull it out of his hands, then clocked him with it, relieving the man of consciousness temporarily. 

Stone stood next to him, looking a bit like a hobbit with the staff. “Good thing Baird wanted to train with bo staffs last month.”

Ezekiel started searching the man for anything dangerous. While there were things he figured were probably magical, he didn’t find anything warranting taking. “So, what are we going to do with him?” he asked, standing up.

“We could take him back to the Library,” Cassandra suggested.

“Why would we want to do that? It doesn’t sound very smart to take a wizard to the largest store of magical items,” Stone countered. 

“If we keep him away from the artifacts, we should be okay,” Cassandra said, looking at the staff in Stone’s hand. “He might not do magic without this staff, look at all the runes in it. And he didn’t cast anything at us either.”

“If I restrain him, he won’t be moving much,” Ezekiel added. He glanced down at the body. “We should hurry, before he wakes up and laughs at us still planning.”

Stone didn’t look thrilled, but handed Cassandra the staff and started lifting the man by the armpits. “You better quit runnin’ your mouth then and grab his feet.”

Ezekiel tried to look saucy while he grabbed jean clad ankles. “Why don’t you make me?”

“Boys, now is not the time,” Cassandra barked, scowling particularly at Ezekiel. “Let’s go, the door isn’t that far away from here.”

Surprisingly, the LiTs managed to move an unconscious tree of a man in broad daylight without problem. They decided to tie him up in a chair in the sparring room, and waited until he woke up.

\---

Harry had not been having a great couple of days. Something was wrong with the fairies, and they were making a mess all over Chicago. The first couple of times he couldn’t even summon Toot, and just when he managed it, some punks came and knocked him out. Stuff like this can make a guy feel pretty useless.

He came to in a room that looked like it belonged in a gentleman’s club from a century ago, or more. The wood paneled walls and floor looked old, and real, along with the antique-looking exercise equipment next to a modern exercise bike. The other weapons in the room though, they looked like something that came out of a larper’s wet dream. Staffs (including his own) and swords and shields and other weapons he recognized but couldn’t name sat in various racks. Wherever he was reeked of magic, the air practically vibrating with it. More importantly, he was tied in a chair, and the three attackers were watching him.

They hadn’t gagged him; their loss. “Look, I think there’s been a misunderstanding-”

The one who put him on the ground in the alley cut him off. “You were doing magic right at the scene of the latest accident, there’s not much to misunderstand,” he said, folding his arms. Harry figured he had to be from somewhere south.

“Okay, yeah, I was doing magic. But I was trying to figure out why the accidents are happening, not cause them,” Harry countered. None of them looked like they believed him; considering the situation, that was fair. “Why did you take me anyway? Who are you people?”

“We’re the Librarians,” the redhead said. When she did, there was distinct magic in her words, not enough to charm him like it probably did an average person, but enough to make him curious. 

“What kind of name is that? Are you some by-the-book wizard vigilantes?” Harry asked. Apparently his response confused them based on their inter-looking. “You really should find out who the other magically inclined people in the area are before you go incapacitating them, and trying to charm them, because if you had, you’d know that I’ve got Chicago covered.”

“Who are you then?” the Asian one with the unexpected Australian accent said. 

“If you had looked in a phone book before you went all vigilante, you would know. Probably don’t even know what a phone book is,” Harry mumbled, that last bit aimed at the Asian one since he looked younger than the other two. They all just looked more confused at that. “The name’s Harry Dresden, wizard for hire.”

“And what exactly do you get hired for?” the Asian one said. Despite his youth, the kid had an air about him that said he’d been through some shit. In fact, the woman had a similar air to her too; it was the southern fighter who seemed less weathered somehow, more on edge having someone tied up in a chair in front of him. Harry concluded the Asian and the redhead had some sketchy black market experience. 

“Well, I’m a P. I., so anything a P. I. might be good for, and then there’s the things a wizard P. I. would be good for,” Harry replied. He could see the fighter thinking up a question, so he beat him to it. “No, I don’t do jobs that involve cursing and hexing and such. I’m an honorable wizard.” 

“Then why were you there in the alley?” the fighter asked. 

“Like I told you before, I was trying to figure out why the accidents were happening in the first place. Well, I know why, probably…” Harry tapered off. There was no reason to tell these people anything, for all he knew, they were the ones causing the problems with the fairies. “Why were you sneaking up on me?”

The three glanced at each other, having some eye conversation Harry interpreted as a “do we trust him” and “maybe he can help” and “but what if he’s actually bad” type of eye conversation, with both of the men ultimately deferring to the redhead. She walked up to him, not close, but enough to change her presence from aloof in thought to leader of the bunch with a calculating eye. “We keep magical items out of the wrong hands,” she said. 

“So you run the magical equivalent of that warehouse in Indiana Jones,” Harry concluded. Maybe the White Council needed one of those.

“...sure. Except it sits in its own pocket dimension and also contains a copy of every book ever written,” she added. 

“That explains the name then, and why this place leaks magic like no one’s business,” Harry said. Something told him these people probably weren’t evil. There wasn’t any way to confirm that, except maybe Sight, but who knows what he’d see in here. He used his Sight anyway, because Harry was pretty good at ignoring risks, and he was just plain curious. 

The lady, since she was nearest, was the first thing he saw, once he adjusted to the near pure magic running through the walls and floor like electrical wiring. The amount of magic surrounding her was like looking into the sun. Magic she hadn’t used though; maybe she didn’t know, or didn’t want to, who knows. A faint black blob near her head leaked black smoke, but the wild magic disturbed it. Whatever that was, she was fighting it as much as her will could. Underneath all the magic he could see her, almost identical but in a white dress, eyes pure white like the magic around her. 

Next he looked at the Asian man, and he audibly gasped. On his head was a gleaming winged helmet. His skin shimmered with the same divine energy. He had to be a demigod. However, compared to the lady, the intensity of magic was like night and day, his magic only barely seeping through his pores. He had some scars on his arms and head which faded into his hair; they looked old and fairly well healed. 

Finally he looked at the fighter. Glowing MMA gloves adorned his hands, and he also had a glittering chainmail shirt. There were bruises, faded, but still noticeable, on his face. While he lacked magic in or around him, there was a little person standing next to him, head reaching his waist. The spirit was watching Harry with a curious expression, but it didn’t do anything else. Before he switched his Sight off, Harry noticed the light pink line connecting each of them by the heart. He had a pretty good guess what that meant. 

It took a moment for Harry to adjust to the relative darkness of the room. The three were looking at him like he just spaced out, which essentially he did. “You okay there?” the fighter asked.

“Oh, yeah, just had a little think,” Harry said. “Something tells me you won’t leave Chicago if I asked you to, so instead I’m gonna let you help me.” That got narrowed eyes from the redhead. “I have a good idea why the accidents have been happening,” Harry paused for dramatic effect, “but first, you need to untie me.”

“Sure, and I’m just gonna be purple now,” the demigod replied sarcastically. 

Harry rolled his eyes. “If we’re gonna work together, we need to have some mutual trust, and me being tied up doesn’t exactly convey that.” No one moved to untie him, so he thought up another reason to make them less wary. “I don’t hurt people unless I have to. I have no reason to hurt you, and I’m the only one in this room who has a personal connection to the problem.”

After yet another eye conversation, the Asian one untied him. Harry rubbed his wrists, then itched his nose, and then got to a more relaxed position in the chair now that his ankles weren’t tied to the legs. “First off, you know my name, but I don’t know yours. I’d rather have something to call you.” There was a quick glance at each other, which Harry kept from being another eye conversation by saying, “I can’t do anything to you if I don’t know your whole name, so just don’t tell me all of it and you’re fine.”

The redhead tilted her head up. “Cassandra.”

The Asian flicked his wrist. “Ezekiel.”

The fighter tilted his head down, like he lifted an imaginary stetson. “Stone.”

Harry nodded at them. “Okay, so you probably saw that silver light, yeah? Well, that was Toot-Toot...he’s a dew-drop fairy. Normally they don’t do stuff like this, but something’s gotten the fairies even more rowdy than they usually are.”

“Do you have any idea what’s made them like this?” Cassandra asked.

“My guess is some sort of magical drug. I haven’t found any charm or magical signature anywhere, and Toot seemed drugged when he finally came to me summoning him,” Harry answered. “And if it is that, I can whip up a general nullification potion, but I don’t have enough to treat all the fairies in Za-Lord’s Guard.” 

“Za-Lord’s Guard?” Stone asked.

“Oh, that’s what they call themselves. They call me Za-Lord because I pay them in pizza. They get information when I need it, and they make a formidable guard,” Harry explained. “With my own supplies, I probably only have enough for half the guard, and it’d take time to get ingredients again.”

“Well,” Cassandra started, glancing at the others behind her, “we do have a lab, which also has potion brewing equipment, and maybe the ingredients you need.”

Stone leaned towards Cassandra. “Jenkins ain’t gonna be happy to know we let a stranger into his lab.”

“What Jenkins doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him,” Cassandra replied. Stone didn’t seem content with that, but he didn’t argue. Cassandra turned to Harry and started walking past him. “Follow me.”

“Sure thing, but first, I'd like my staff back,” Harry said. Stone immediately looked uneasily at Cassandra, who then looked warily at Harry. He wasn't going to get his staff back. “Fine. I don't need it for potions, but I want someone to at least bring it so it doesn't get left here.”

“I'll get it,” Ezekiel said, grabbing the staff before Harry could stop him. Comically, it was a good foot taller than him. Not so comically, the runes started glowing faintly in his grasp. Ezekiel looked at the staff wide-eyed. “Uh, is it supposed to do that?”

“You might want to let someone else hold it,” Harry started, clearing his throat to hide his concern about what Ezekiel just managed.

Stone took the staff, watching Ezekiel for a moment, then glaring at Harry. “Why’d it light up like that?”

“I don’t actually know. You aren’t a wizard, are you?” Harry asked Ezekiel, who shook his head, confused. “Well, just don’t hold it again. Now, let's go make us a potion.”

\---

Cassandra had never seen a potion quite like the one Harry made. She had watched Jenkins make a few, but they were all very plant or nature based. Harry’s potion was much more physical based, calling for things Cassandra previously thought not edible like body wash for touch, the sound of flowing water, and a piece of clean white cloth. 

Harry assured her it would work. Even more surprising was the fact that Harry was able to find all he needed to to make a full batch in Jenkins’s lab. She made a mental note to ask Jenkins about different potion brewing methods when he returned. 

“Okay, easy part done. Now to round up fifteen or so fairies off their balls on magical drugs,” Harry announced once he poured the potion into an empty milk jug and screwed on the cap. 

“How do we round up fairies?” Ezekiel asked. “That one that zipped past us was pretty fast.”

“If I can summon Toot again, he can help find the rest, hopefully,” Harry said, taking the pot he had used to the nearby sink to wash it. “Our problem now is that Toot won’t be at the paint explosion anymore. In order to find him, we have to wait until they cause another accident somewhere.” 

“Can we predict where they might be next?” Stone asked.

“There's no rhyme or reason to the accidents. It’s like they just fly around and cause a mess when they see potential for one,” Harry replied, scrubbing the pot with a soapy sponge.

“Are you sure there’s not a pattern?” Cassandra asked, thoughts already rolling. “I don’t know Chicago well enough to catch if the incidents we know about have a pattern.” She turned to Ezekiel, who was tapping at his phone already. “Could you map them and sort by date, earliest to latest?”

“On it, Red,” Ezekiel chimed, typing for a second more, then grabbing Stone by the arm. “We’ll have it up on the projector in five minutes or so.” The two left, leaving Cassandra alone with Harry.

Cassandra busied herself with organizing some of the supplies while Harry scrubbed away, even though he did a pretty good job of cleaning up already. 

“So, how long you been a, uh, a librarian?” Harry asked. 

“Eight months,” Cassandra said. “How long have you been a wizard?”

“Oh, I've had magical inclinations since I was ten, but it took years of training to be what I am now.” He looked thoughtfully at the pot, deciding it was well scrubbed, and started rinsing it. “How come I've never heard of this place?”

“It is a secret magical library for a reason, and it works best if it stays that way too,” Cassandra said, a bit of threat under the words. 

“Understandable,” Harry said with a nod. “Though from what I've seen, regular people tend to explain away magic as much as they can.”

Cassandra thought for a moment. Maybe this wizard might have some outside knowledge towards the Library’s overarching problem. “Have you heard anything about a Dulaque?”

The question was enough to get Harry to glance over his shoulder at her. “You mean like Lancelot Dulaque?”

“That's the one,” Cassandra said quite unenthused.

Harry seemed pretty confused. “Well, he was alive at one point, a night to King Arthur in Camelot, but that was over a millennium ago. Why, should I have heard more recent news?”

“Well, he’s certainly still alive,” Cassandra said.

He didn’t seem all that shocked to hear that. “That's news to me. The one I thought may be around still is Merlin, but I didn't think the knights were ever immortal.” He sat the now rinsed pot on the drying rack next to the sink, then turned to face Cassandra. “Should I be concerned about him? Or any other people from that time?”

“He’s attempting to boost the ley lines, but he's not managed to do it yet,” Cassandra said, noting the way Harry looked at her with mild horror. “It was enough to make Morgan Le Fay head to the feywild anyway.”

“So she’s around too, sort of,” Harry mused. “Well at least the courts are more than strong enough to handle her there if things went south.” He scratched the scruff on his chin in thought. “I'll keep an eye and ear out for Dulaque. If he got what he wanted, my job would be a lot harder.”

“Is Chicago a big city for magic?” Cassandra asked. They hadn't really had any cases take them there since they started. 

“It’s certainly got more going on than you'd think,” Harry replied, grabbing his staff which Stone had left propped against a cabinet. “I think it's been five minutes.”

Cassandra knew six minutes and twenty seconds had past, but didn't say it. “It probably has,” she said, grabbing the jug of potion. “Hopefully I'll be able to find a pattern so we aren't sitting around all day waiting.”

Harry glanced at her as they walked into the hallway. “Your friend isn't the one figuring it out? He seemed like he was.”

“Oh, Ezekiel can map them for me, but I can do better than his algorithms generally,” Cassandra said casually. She could feel Harry’s shocked stare, which made her smile a little.

\---

Ezekiel had already mapped the incidents as they showed up in the clippings book, or more accurately, the app he made that connected to the Library did that for him. All Ezekiel had to do was send that data to the computer and turn on the projector. It took Stone more time to get the white screen set up in front of the back door, and they still had two of the five minutes left.

“I’ll go get them,” Stone said. He started back towards the lab since Cassandra and Harry hadn’t left yet, but Ezekiel caught him by the hip.

“Or, we could make use of the little time we have alone,” Ezekiel purred, pressing himself against Stone.

“Zeke, we can’t, we got a mission to do,” Stone explained, but he couldn’t help but tilt his head close to the thief’s. 

“Come on, just a little kiss then,” Ezekiel suggested, his nose barely brushing against Stone’s.

Stone knew if they started, it was likely they weren’t gonna stop, but Ezekiel was oh so good at making Stone ignore the logical part of himself. “...Just one,” Stone said, and pressed his lips against Ezekiel’s.

As predicted, the one kiss turned into a bunch, which turned into Ezekiel pressed against the nearest wall. They didn't have long though; Harry cleared his throat loudly as he and Cassandra walked into the annex’s main room. Ezekiel let out a frustrated noise as Stone stepped out of his space. The archaeologist looked a little embarrassed at being caught, and Ezekiel looked downright annoyed they got interrupted.

Cassandra rolled her eyes at both of them, then walked towards the screen. She studied it for a moment, then flicked her hands in front of her, processing the information via visual hallucination. The boys watched her casually since it was a fairly regular occurrence, and she'd gotten better with keeping it from overwhelming her. Harry watched with confusion and mild concern.

“There’s been fourteen incidents in the span of five days….not concentric or spiral, but there’s something net like...Zeke put on the leyline overlay, as fine of a resolution as you can...oh yes, that’s it, they’re following branches off the main leylines,” Cassandra concluded, swiping away her calculations. “Which means, the nearest branch intersection from the paint truck should be somewhere near here, and they’ll probably do something within the next couple of hours, based off the intervals.” She pointed to an intersection of the glowing blue lines just north of downtown Chicago.

“How did you figure that? And how do you get technology to work in here?” Harry asked. 

“Synesthete with a mix of photographic memory,” Cassandra said, though she paused to think about his second question. “Why would it not work?”

“All the wizards I know can fry a phone just by standing near it. How that projector hasn’t started bugging out with me here I have no clue,” Harry explained.

“Must be you mate. Internet here is superb quality,” Ezekiel said. 

“So we know where, but what’s the plan?” Stone asked. 

“Ideally, I’ll summon Toots, douse him with the potion, then from there we do that for the rest of the fairies,” Harry said. “Unless you have a better idea.”

Cassandra looked to Stone. “Jenkins would know if we had something...do you have any literary suggestions that could lead us in the right direction?”

“I can certainly try,” Stone said. He went over to the card catalogue and started pulling drawers, looking at cards, eventually accumulating three cards after about five minutes (Ezekiel’s pet project of turning the card catalogue digital was still a long way from finished). “I’ve got a reference for a text on fairies and other fae creatures, what looks like potentially a spell book with ways to summon a few things, and someone’s diary kept while in the feywild.”

Harry glanced to Cassandra. “Any chance I can get a library card here?”

She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, strict no-loan policy,” then turned to the group in general, “those books may have something useful.” She looked over to Ezekiel. “How well does the searching the digital artifact inventory work?” (That project was technically complete, but Ezekiel let Jenkins do item tags and warnings for a lot of it since Jenkins was in charge of the physical inventory logs, which makes searching for something like “magic fairy catcher” turn up nothing)

“If Jenkins is the one searching, it works fine...but for anyone else except maybe Flynn it’s kind of hit or miss,” Ezekiel confessed, pulling up the program on the computer. “I’ll try my best, but no promises.”

Twenty minutes later, the team actually turned up something useful. Turned out the Library had an artifact that did just what they needed; a living wooden bowl of sorts that, once filled with water, would attract any fairy in a couple mile radius. With that tool in hand, a bottle of water to fill it with, and the jug of potion the trio and Harry set off to Cassandra’s prediction for where the fairies would strike next.

Harry walked with determination, like one who wants to appear like they know where they're going when in fact they don't know where they're going, stopping in a more discrete alleyway away from prying eyes. Whipping out a piece of chalk, he made a five foot wide circle on the concrete. “Okay, so once the bowl does its job, I'll activate the circle, keeping me and the fairies contained, and douse them,” Harry said. “And hopefully it works.”

“What should we do if it doesn't?” Cassandra asked. 

“If it doesn't, I'll be trapped with a pack of now angry fairies, which I will try my best to get away from by breaking the circle. But we’ll hope it doesn't come to that,” Harry said, throwing a charming smile at the end. He knelt down next to the bowl in the middle of the circle, holding the water bottle above it. “Here goes nothing.” Once the water filled the bowl, flowers sprouted from the rim, lavender, marigold, honeysuckle and snapdragons. The water itself shimmered like someone dumped in blue food luster dust.

Nothing happened for thirty seconds...or a minute….or even two, but once three minutes passed, a whole bunch of little silver lights zipped to the bowl. Thirty or so foot tall humanoid creatures with various vibrant colored puff balls of hair stood around the edge or lounged in the water, taking in the flowers and chittering amongst themselves. Once they were all within the bounds of the circle, Harry quickly knelt down and touched the chalk, creating an invisible magical wall around himself. A few of the fairies noticed, but most of them were too occupied with the bowl to care. With haste he grabbed the potion jug and thoroughly drenched the fairies, the force of it knocking them all to the ground.

For a moment, nothing happened, then slowly the fairies righted themselves, fluttering their wings to dry them. One in particular, with a mane of magenta colored hair and wearing bottle caps hooked together as a sort of chainmail shirt, sat up and then flew over to Harry. 

“Heya Toot, feeling better?” Harry asked.

The little fairy bobbed in flight. “Za-Lord! I feel great! I can think again.” The fairy’s voice sounded like someone did a comical pitch shift up a couple octaves.

Harry frowned. “What happened to you all?”

“There was a Tylwyth Teg that gave us a sweet. They told us it would taste even better than pizza, and it did, but then I couldn’t stop doing things that made me laugh,” Toot explained. The little fairy bowed his head. “Did we do something bad?”

“Well, you were trying your best to make a mess of Chicago,” Harry said. “Nothing that can’t be fixed eventually.”

“Oh, good,” Toot said, flying in a loop in relief. 

“Next time, don’t take drugs from fey you don’t know...or any at all.” Harry glanced to the other fairies. “Make sure the rest are themselves, then you’re free to go.”

“Aye!” Toot saluted, then zipped down to the fairies, talking to each one. It took about a minute for Toot to conduct the survey of his personnel before he reported back to Harry. “Everyone is back to normal.”

“Good.” Harry scuffed the chalk, dispelling the magic circle. The fairies all stayed, looking expectantly at Toot, who was looking expectantly at Harry. “Be more careful next time, okay?”

“No drugs from strangers, even if they taste better than pizza,” Toot said, and without another word, he zipped off, with the rest of the guard following him.

Harry picked up the wooden bowl, dumping out the water. The flowers fizzled out in a puff of ash, and then the bowl looked just like a plain wooden mixing bowl. “Well that went considerably better than I thought it would,” he said to the LiTs who just watched the whole thing.

“It’s normally more involved on our end too,” Cassandra said. “I feel like we didn’t do a whole lot to solve this case.”

“You did more than you think,” Harry said, handing her the bowl. “It would’ve taken me a couple weeks to have enough ingredients, and then I would have to probably treat them all individually since I didn’t have that fancy bowl. You made my job a whole lot easier...even if you did knock me out and kidnap me.”

Stone ducked his head a little. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“No hard feelings,” Harry replied. He reached into his duster, pulling out a business card. “If you’re ever back in Chicago and need some magical help, just give me a call.” He handed it to Cassandra.

“We don’t have a business card, but if you’re ever in Portland, just knock on Saint John’s bridge,” Ezekiel said. Stone gave him a bit of a concerned look, but Ezekiel waved it off. “I took it upon myself to revamp the security system when we first got there, it’s fine.”

With the job done, the four stood awkwardly in the alley for a few moments. “Is there a way I could get a lift to my place with your fancy teleporting door? It’s a bit of a walk from here.”

Cassandra smiled at him. “I think we can manage that.”

After a quick hop to another street corner five miles away, the LiTs were once again alone in the Annex. It only took twenty seconds of silence and a few looks before Ezekiel scooted closer to Cassandra, giving a tentative kiss, which she intently returned. It certainly took no time at all for Stone to get in on the action too. 

If only the phone in the Annex hadn’t started ringing. 

“Seriously?!” Ezekiel groaned as Cassandra reluctantly left his embrace to answer it. 

“Hello? Hi Jenkins...sure, one back door coming right up.” Cassandra hung up the phone and set the backdoor to the coordinates Jenkins had written down before he left. Within a few seconds the door glowed, and the caretaker entered.

“I see everything is still in order,” Jenkins said, taking off his overcoat and putting it on the rack next to the door.

“We just finished a case too,” Cassandra added. Jenkins looked at the LiTs for more information.

“Fairies on sketchy fey drugs in Chicago,” Ezekiel said, standing quite close to Stone. 

Jenkins raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. Did you recover any of the drugs?”

“No, but the fairies are sober now,” Stone answered. 

“Unfortunate. I’ll keep an eye on that. Fey substances are nothing to mess around with,” Jenkins said as he walked over to his desk. He pulled out a rather thick looking book and turned pages until he got to the entry he wanted. Jenkins started to grab a nearby pen, but he noticed the LiTs loitering. “Do you need something?”

“Oh, uh, no, we’re fine,” Cassandra said. She glanced to the two with her, then looked back to Jenkins. “You know, I think we’ll head off for the day, since we did close a case. Unless you need us for something…”

It was easy to see the LiTs clearly had somewhere else they wanted to be. “Unless you want to write my entry for Nessie in the magical creatures log, I think I will be quite fine if you retire for the day.”

“Thanks Jenkins,” she said. She hurried up to Jenkins, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, then the LiTs made a hasty exit, finally ready to have some uninterrupted time to themselves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for those of you who haven’t read any of the Dresden Files, the character they meet is the protagonist from that series. He’s a wizard P. I. in Chicago, and basically Chicago’s de-facto defender from magical threats. For those that have read it, this is set sometime before Blood Rites for convenience of none of the events in Changes and later looming over Harry, and because I forgot to write in Mouse. For those who haven’t, I’ll explain the Sight and the potion he made in the next “chapter” because knowing how Sight works makes what Harry saw have a lot more meaning, and it’s a bit much to have in these notes.


	2. How Sight Works

The Sight is essentially a supernatural third eye which wizards can use to see magic and see past things like illusions and glamours. Whatever they see they can’t forget it, so if you look at something horrible, you might go insane. In the Sight, physical wounds are often representations of psychological ones, and all magical effects are visible. In this case, Ezekiel’s demigoddess and Cassandra’s magical ability (before operation) are seen as they interact with that person; Ezekiel’s is intrinsic, and he just thinks he’s lucky since he was an orphan till he got taken in by Lenore Jones and doesn’t know who his biological parents are. Cassandra still has her tumor, so she can’t access her magic, but it’s there. 

For the wounds, Ezekiel’s are scars, because in this universe Cassandra helped him heal a lot, which is why he doesn’t really act like Ezekiel in season 1. Stone’s bruises aren’t fresh, but they aren’t healed either. Like the show, he never really made up with his dad, and didn’t heal from abuse either, he just did his “shove it away behind strong facade” he does. The black spot is Cassandra’s tumor, so literal wound representation there, and I like to think her immense magic ability is what kept her alive so long with it. The smoke it gives off is representation of how that tumor affects her perceptions sometimes, but she doesn’t let it be her only frame of reference either. 

In Sight, if someone’s got some pretty heavy symbolism in the book that can be embodied, it’ll be revealed in Sight. Cassandra’s dress is the one when she met the ladies of the lake, that’s pretty much more magical representation of Cassandra’s potential. Ezekiel’s helmet is quite literally representing his demigod heritage, which somewhere on tumblr I got people where saying maybe it was Hermes, so I went with that. The little person next to Stone is what I like to think representative of his native heritage, which isn’t explicitly in the show but I like the theory that his mom was Choctaw and that’s why his dad was being rude on the Choctaw land. In Choctaw legend, there are beings called Kowi anukasha who live in the forest and sometimes steal kids to train up as healers. My twist is that when Stone’s mom died (my theory is she did when he was pretty young), one was sent to help guide Stone. I don’t know if Choctaw beliefs include spirit animals, at least my research didn’t bring any up. 

For the potion, in the Dresden Files magic system, spells have eight components: a liquid base, something to go for sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, something for the mind, and something for the spirit, so the method of choosing ingredients for me was thinking of purifying and cleansing things for the different senses...I just didn’t choose all 7 ingredients.


End file.
